October 1 2019
“The art market is an ideal playground for money laundering,” says Thomas Christ, a board member of the Basel Institute on Governance, a Swiss nonprofit that has proposed anti-money-laundering standards for art market operators. He added, “We have to ask for clear transparency, where you got the money from and where is it going.”
The regulatory loophole US and European legislators are working hard to close is this:
Unlike banks, life insurance companies, casinos, currency exchangers, and even precious-metals dealers, auction houses and art sellers have no obligation to report large cash transactions to a governing authority. In fact, dealers can keep the names of buyers and sellers anonymous.
